Single women are re-emerging in real estate, with numbers are growing in proportion to the rest of the market. The number of single female buyers has been on the rise since 1981, increasing from 11 percent to 22 percent during the market’s peak in 2006, according to data from the National Association of REALTORS®. Seventeen percent of home buyers today are single women. That number is expected to grow in the coming years. “They don’t fear buying a home and are not waiting to be in a relationship to qualify for a mortgage,” says Elizabeth Weintraub, broker-associate at Lyon Real Estate in Sacramento, Calif. Single men, on the other hand, are purchasing homes at far lower rates, even with their higher earnings. Single men have accounted for about 7 percent of home buyers in 2016, according to NAR data. Single female home buyers tend to be older than both single men and married couples who are buying homes, surveys show. Many are buying who are single, including those who are widowed or divorced or who have never been married at all. Some have children with them. The number of single-mother households increased to 8.6 million in 2011 from 1.9 million in 1960, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center analysis. Single female buyers, on average, are typically looking for a 1,500-square-foot home with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, says Jessica Lautz, NAR’s manager of member and consumer reach. About half are looking to buy in urban centers, while the remainder want to buy in rural areas or small towns. They also are showing a greater interest in condos that offer landscaping and other maintenance services and feature a community-centric environment. The median age for a single female buyer is 50 (single male buyers’ median age is 47 and the median age for a married couple buyer is 44). The decline in the U.S. marriage rate is expected to result in an increase in single female and single male home buyers in the coming years. (The marriage rate has fallen from 8.2 per 1,000 people in 2000 to 6.9 per 1,000 people in 2014.) “I expect single women buyers to continue to be a force in the market,” Lautz says.

Source: Construction Dive